Did psychiatrist lose millions to scammers?
An eminent psychiatrist who is on the faculty at the University of California, Irvine has reportedly fallen victim to Internet scammers who may have defrauded him of up to $3 million over a ten year period. Consequently, Guy Gottschalk, the son of 89-year-old psychiatrist Dr Louis Gottschalk, is attempting to remove his father as administrator of the family's $8 million estate.

Professor Gottschalk has been a prominent researcher in brain function (known for developing the Gottschalk-Gleser content analysis scales) and in the late '90's created a $1.5 million endowed research fund at the university. The medical plaza at UCI is named after him and his late wife Helen (who was a professor of dermatology at UCI).

There are a lot of missing pieces to the scam story and it sounds like family conflict is a part of the problem. But if indeed this much has been lost in an ongoing 419 scam I would guess that it is a record loss. I suspect, too, that as word gets out it's going to inspire a whole new generation of Nigerian scammers -- whether the story is accurate or not!

Raise the spam shields, Scotty! They're powering up to fire!